Amazon turns 30: What was your first order?

A look at the career of Jeff Bezos, world's richest man

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, Blue Origin and owner of the Washington Post, is thought to be the richest person in the world.

SEATTLE - Three decades ago, in 1994, a guy by the name of Jeff Bezos worked out of his garage and founded a little company you may know today as Amazon.

Soon after, Amazon.com officially opened for business as an online bookseller, where Bezos began selling books on the still-emerging World Wide Web. And within a month, the retailer had shipped books to all 50 U.S. states and to 45 countries.

Today, Amazon is one of the largest shopping sites in the world, where you can buy everything from streaming media to dog food to cars – and, of course, books.

How to find your first order

If you were an Amazon customer in the 1990s, there’s a good chance you were in college. Maybe your first order was for textbooks, or perhaps CDs. Either way, a trip all the way back through your order history can be a nostalgic experience to a time when ordering something online was still a novelty.

Amazon logo at distribution center. (Credit: SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP) (Photo by SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP via Getty Images)

To find your early order history, click on your profile, then "Your Orders." You can scroll back by year, all the way back to 1995 if you were an early adopter.

History of Amazon

According to History.com, Bezo’s motto in 1994 was "get big fast," and the Seattle-based company eventually morphed into an e-commerce heavyweight, selling everything from groceries to furniture, ultimately revolutionizing the way people shopped.

By the end of 1996, Amazon had racked up $15.7 million in revenues, and in 1997 Bezos took the company public with an initial public offering that raised $54 million.

What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud platform offered by Amazon that stores its customers' data, runs their online activities and more.

Then in 1998, Amazon extended beyond books and started selling music CDs, and by the following year, it had added more product categories, such as toys and electronics.

By December 1999, Amazon had shipped 20 million items to 150 countries around the globe. That same month, Bezos was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

Amazon launches Amazon Prime

By 2005, the company had launched Amazon Prime, a bundle-of-services membership program. The membership was created as a means for offering fast, free delivery with its two-day free shipping.

In 2007, Amazon debuted its Kindle e-reader, and just four years later, the company announced it was selling more e-books than print books.

Additionally, Amazon has acquired many companies over the years, most notably Zappos and Whole Foods.

Two decades after its founding and with Bezos still as the founder, Amazon’s market value was $250 billion. In 2017, Bezos was named the richest man in the world.

On July 5, 2021, Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon to focus on his aerospace company Blue Origin.

In 2023, Amazon faced scrutiny for its increased layoffs. In Jan. of 2023, Amazon said it would cut about 18,000 positions, the largest amount of layoffs in the company’s history.